Friday, November 6, 2015

Who should be in charge of running Maui County? This question was
asked at a hearing on a resolution before a subcommittee of the Maui County
Council and two answers emerged: the mayor or a county manager?

So what exactly is a manager? To answer that question, we have
to look at the entire structure of the government itself. A county manager comes
from an entirely different model called the council-manager system of
government. In that system, only the council is elected. The council oversees
the budget, general administration, and establishes various policies. To carry
out these policies and laws, the council appoints a professional manager to run
the day-to-day operations of the county. According to the National League of
Cities, this is the more common form of government among counties and
municipalities in the United States.

The council-manager model emerged out of the Progressive Era
in the early twentieth century. It was meant to curb the political favoritism
that came with the mayoral form of government in large, industrial cities like
New York City. (Tammany Hall in the Big Apple was famous for such forms of
favoritism.)

The first city to adopt this form of government was in 1908 in
a little town called Staunton, Virginia. It caught on quickly and spread to
cities and counties during the first two decades of the twentieth century.
Other countries like Belize, Ireland, Canada, and New Zealand have adopted this
form of government too.

So should we do the same? Many who testified before the
Council on Monday think so. After all, the county manager doesn’t have to worry
about fundraising and re-election campaigns. He or she would be answerable to
the Council for appointments and carrying out the duties and services of the
county. In a lot of ways, the manager is something like a chief executive
officer in a corporation (or an executive director in a non-profit corporation)
and the council serves as the Board of Directors.

Ironically, the resolution to consider a form of government
designed to keep politics out of county affairs could be politically motivated.
The resolution came from Council Chairman, Mike White. White has written
editorials in this newspaper that have encouraged everyone to consider this
form of government. White also has butted heads with the current Arakawa
administration on various issues, proposals, and projects.

Of course, there were others at the hearings this week who
want to keep voting for a mayor and want to continue with the traditional
mayoral form of government. The county government we have now—which is the form
of government for all counties—goes back to the same era in the early twentieth
century.

While the Progressive Movement sought to reform municipal
government, the people in the Territory of Hawaii simply wanted a municipality.
Counties were created by way of a statute in the Territorial Legislature in
1905.

Unlike the mainland, voters in the territory were not allowed
to directly elect their governor. The governor’s post was appointed by the
President of the United States and in a few cases it was a political plum.
Territorial governors often switched with the president and some had never been
to Hawaii before taking on the job.

The creation of counties at the very least allowed people to
directly elect an executive leader and a county council. Historically, this
created a form of populism that has often been overlooked and forgotten. Long
before the stark political changes in the 1950s, working people, unions and
other civic organizations started flexing their political muscles early and on
the municipal level.

John H. Wilson was the closest thing you could call a
“celebrity” civil engineer and surveyor. Part Native-Hawaiian and born and
raised on Oahu, Wilson made a name for himself as an engineer of big road
projects, including our own Hana Highway.

He also was a politician. In 1900, the first year of the
territory, Wilson helped form the Democratic Party of Hawaii. He was elected
mayor of the City and County of Honolulu three different times from the 1920s
through the early 1950s.

Mayor Wilson was among the few directly-elected leaders at the
time. He considered his party the “party of the unwashed” and spoke on behalf
of the little guy. People liked Wilson and he was beloved by many for what he
did for the City during the territorial era.

So perhaps Councilmember Riki Hokama has a point when he said on
Monday that “there is nothing wrong with being political.”

But don’t expect major changes anytime soon. The resolution
heard this week doesn’t alter any government structures. Far from it. It
creates a committee to review and explore the county manager as a possible
alternative. The resolution is scheduled to be heard by the full County Council
on November 20. Rest assured, the question will come up again.